10 Songs That Broke Up Bands

It's never easy picking which songs eventually end up being put an album. Since every single songwriter has their "babies" that they wish would be included, some disagreement always erupts when other egos come into the picture. Even if the song ends up being good, that doesn't necessarily mean that the band itself is on the best of terms.

Across every genre of music, plenty of creative conflicts between bands have always stemmed from one song. It could be that the song is too different or that everyone isn't quite on board, but the release of each of these songs came at a pretty hefty price.

While not every one of these breakups can be traced back to one song, these tracks ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back for almost every one of these acts. For as catchy as they might seem on first listen, these songs are the reason why these musicians can't talk to each other any more. Once these were recorded, these artists wiped their hands of their respective projects and went their separate ways. There's a lot of factors that go into making a good band, but at the end of the day, if you can't agree on the music, it's all going to go downhill.

Ever since their start in the '60s, the Who always felt like a band for the people. They may have had their more extravagant moments like on Tommy or Quadrophenia, but the whole point behind the music was for Pete Townshend to relate to his audience on a more profound level. So when a song comes out that ends up pointing out the artificial nature of the job, things came crashing down real quick.

On the surface, "Eminence Front" is actually a pretty great song, with the band's trademark synthesizer sounds peppered throughout, but the real downfall comes in the lyrics. Though there are some good food for thought in the wordplay, Townshend doesn't mince words when talking about the entire project being a "put-on" at this point. Given the amount of distance this is from something like Who's Next, it's almost like this song is mocking for enjoying it rather than looking beyond the catchy tune.

After having already lost Keith Moon two albums before, this was the moment where Pete Townshend officially washed his hands of the Who project, which wouldn't be revisited in a studio setting until the late '00s. The Who's music is able to endure almost anything, but this one final classic showed that everything they had worked towards was about to fade away.